Defiant To The End / Western Animation

Warning: As this is often a Death Trope, expect spoilers.

Those who remain Defiant to the End in Western Animation.

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• A humorous example as the final joke in the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "The Dressing", as Carl so about to be blown up by hundreds of robot turkeys with laser-sock weapons: "...Your mother--!"
• In Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Slug captures Wildcat and Batman and begins lowering them into a pit so they can be eaten by mutant snapping turtles. Wildcat starts insulting Slug, stinging his pride enough to make him pull Wildcat back out so they can fistfight.
• Stinkmeaner takes this trope pretty far in The Boondocks (it's Played for Laughs). After essentially getting himself into an over-matched fight, he curses his opponent Robert repeatedly while getting beaten to death. Upon arriving in Hell, he refuses to succumb to the torture everyone else is facing and trains up to the point where even the Devil himself is amazed enough to send him back to Earth.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • A scene based on Knightfall, the episode introducing Bane to Batman: The Animated Series has Bane basically curbstomping Batman with his enhanced strength, demanding that Batman begs for his life.
    Bane: Cry! BEG! SCREAM MY NAME!!!
    Batman: Never!
  • In Superman: The Animated Series:
    Darkseid: People of Earth - I am Darkseid, Lord of Apokolips. Here is your savior... cowed, and broken. I have crushed him as easily as I have crushed all who have dared to oppose me throughout the cosmos. I am power unlike any you have ever known: absolute, infinite, and unrelenting. You have no choice but to prepare for a long, dark future as my subjects... and my slaves.
    (Beat)
    Dan Turpin: In a pig's eye!
  • Justice League, "The Terror Beyond". Even after being bound hand and foot by Icthultu, Hawkgirl has nothing but spite for the Eldritch Abomination.
    Ichthultu: Speak to me, child of Thanagar.
    Hawkgirl: Nothing to say! I have a gesture for you, but my hands are tied.
    • The Question, when captured by Cadmus and subjected to drugs and Electric Torture, responds by raving about nonsensical information of no practical use to anyone. (Alternately, since this version of The Question is a wacky Conspiracy Theorist, he may really believe this is helpful information.)
    Dr. Moon: Tell me what you know.
    The Question: The plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces are called "aglets". Their true purpose is sinister!
• In one episode of Family Guy, after the Y2K, Joe Swanson's wheelchair gets melted into the curb, leaving him completely immobilised. A giant mutated rat turns up and looks like it's going to eat him. Joe's response? "BRING IT ON!!" He turns up again alive and well later in the episode, implying he was able to kill or at least fight the thing off.
• Final Space: When beaten down and about to be slain by Bolo and Mooncake, the Titan Oreskis simply spits a glob of blood and readies himself for a last stand.
  Oreskis: Bring it!
• Godzilla: The Series: In the episode "Future Shock", we learn that Godzilla did this at some point before HEAT arrives in the Bad Future version of 2028 in an attempt to protect the last few million humans from a race of genetically engineered monsters called the Dragmas. He SUCCEEDED. To top it off, it's implied he also did NOT go down alone. Crosses into both heartwarming and sad when we are told all of this after being shown his Memorial Statue....
• Gravity Falls: In "Weirdmaggedon: Part 1", Ford Pines claims he rather choose to die before joining Bill Cipher and his gang.
  • In "Weirdmaggedon: Part 3," the non-Pines members of the Zodiac do this. Bill Cipher has essentially become a Physical God at this point, able to warp all of reality however he sees fit, and they still tell him that they're not scared of his power, taking up whatever weapons they have to attack him. Unfortunately, he traps them all in tapestries before they can act, but they still went down fighting.
• Lin Beifong in The Legend of Korra is a non-fatal example. When captured Amon tells her to give up Korra's location and he will allow her to keep her bending. The only thing she says is that he's getting nothing from her and then quietly accepts her fate.
• In The Long Long Holiday, Mr. Herbin is gunned down by the Germans while yelling "Viva la France!"
• In one episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998), some defeated villains join in laughing at the girls when they are embarrassed publicly by the Professor.
• Happens quite a bit in ReBoot whenever Megabyte has the upper hand. He lampshades it in season 3 when confronted by a grown-up Enzo Matrix: "Where's that annoying chatter of yours? Mega Breath this and Mega Both that!"
  • In the same season, in the last few episodes Megabyte has captured Mainframe's principal office and removed Phong's head from his body, keeping him alive just to get the portal command codes. He has to use an extraction device, as Phong refuses to cooperate.
    Phong: I will fight you... to the last... virus.
• Rick and Morty: In episode "Unmortricken", even after Rick Prime is defeated and restrained, he continues to act condescending to everyone. He talks down to Evil Morty about making him his sidekick and saying the plans for the Omega Weapon are for "grown-ups". Then, when Rick starts to beat him to death, smashing his face in, he just continues to laugh at him while taunting him by stating he made Rick who he is, pointing out how their positions could have been reversed if Rick had perfected inter-dimensional travel before him, and that after he "saw infinity" all he ended up doing was living in Rick Prime's garage and raising his own grandson.
• In one Robot Chicken sketch, Batman finally just decides to have The Joker executed for his crimes. At the police station, the latter yells "Fuck you, Dork Knight!" as he's electrocuted to death.
• The Simpsons: Bart Simpson in the episode "Bart the Murderer". After he had accidentally ended up in the Springfield mafia's turf, he was taken and interrogated by them, believing that he was a spy. He answered their questions with "eat my shorts" and "don't have a cow". In this case, Bart's insults and tough guy act actually impresses the mafia, convincing them to give him a job as a bartender.
  • It also helped that "Don't Have A Cow" and "Eat My Shorts" were the names of racehorses. And that Don't Have A Cow won that day's race, beating out Cowabunga and Yabba-Dabba-Doo.
• In The Smurfs Springtime Special, Gargamel's much-crueler godfather Balthazar tries to use his "magic wand of the future" (his term for a musket) on the Smurfs. He misses them, but hits their pet duck, much to the Smurfs' terror. Then:
  Balthazar: Here me Smurfs and hear me well! I am Balthazar, master wizard! (Smurfs look at him with pure hate) Surrender six of your own or you will pay dearly!
  Hefty Smurf: Here's our answer, Balthazar! (Throws a snowball at him.)
  Clumsy Smurf: Yeah, and here's mine! (Does the same)
  
  The Smurfs all decide to charge him as he prepares to fire again, but luckily, the noise from the first shot woke up a slumbering bear, which is pretty angry; it chases the villains away.
• Princess Sally in the third episode of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). When she was captured by Dr. Robotnik, he demanded her to tell where Knothole is located. Sally's response: "Sure I will. When you get a life."
• Star Wars Rebels: In "Legacy of Mandalore", even with two lightsabers (Ezra's and the Darksaber) scissored at his neck, and missing several fingers, Gar Saxon refuses to surrender, and would rather die. When Sabine refuses to kill him, he tries to shoot her and gets shot himself.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003), Splinter's master Hamato Yoshi was ambushed by the Shredder's men, unarmed, and outnumbered by more than ten to one, but he still wouldn't go down without a fight. And even though he did go down, he was willing to die before he told the Shredder anything, and his last words to the villain were to insult him, saying, "He who lives without honor will die without honor."
• Teen Titans has Cyborg, dismembered and completely at the mercy of Brother Blood, giving Brother Blood a Curse Cut Short.
  • This is the standard for all the Titans. But in "Haunted", when Robin is being beaten to an inch of death by Slade or so he thought to the point that Robin doesn't even have the strength to stand anymore, he finally begs Slade to stop and it's one of the most disturbing scenes in the series.
• Inverted in Thunder Cats 2011 when one of a pair of lizards, stuck in the stocks, snaps at his groveling companion not to expect mercy from their captors, and angrily gives heroic Catfolk Prince Lion-O an earful about his motives for stealing the Cats' crops that metastasizes into a Screw You, Elves! speech, despite the very real threat of death for confronting the prince of the race who enslaved him. Lion-O's response is to defend the prisoners against an Angry Mob of Cat Folk and successfully plead with his father for their release.
• Perhaps one of the best examples of this in W.I.T.C.H. is when Nerissa has captured Hay Lin's grandmother, who was likewise a member of CHYKN, the previous group of guardians. No matter what Nerissa offers her (because she needs Grandma Lin to complete CHYKN once more) she refuses, and she's quite sassy for an old, nearly powerless woman. (Nerissa winds up creating an astral drop of younger grandma Lin since the real one won't cooperate.)
• Wander over Yonder: Near the end of "The Bot", Bot 13/Beep-Boop returns to Lord Dominator's headquarters with the coordinates to the planet he had scouted out earlier and is just about to give them to her...but thanks to a Heel–Face Turn by Wander, he denies her access. When she furiously demands Bot 13 to display the coordinates, threatening to have him destroyed if he defies her, what does he do? He corrects her that his name is Beep-Boop and deletes the coordinates from his memory right in front of her! This, of course, leads to a Heroic Sacrifice on his part as he is Thrown Out the Airlock...

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